


Ashcliff

by MapleLantern



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anger Management, Anxiety Disorder, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, Murder, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-09 11:36:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12275655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapleLantern/pseuds/MapleLantern
Summary: Ben Solo has always had problems. And after things spiral out of control one day, he eventually finds himself on his way to Ashcliff; a psychiatric hospital for kids like him. He isn't expecting any silver linings to being sent away and locked up, but soon he meets another resident of the ward with startling red hair.





	Ashcliff

**PATIENT RECORD:** BENJAMIN ORGANA-SOLO, 18514-N

 **Medical file:** 111497820

 **Education file:** 11251215 

 **Date of admittance:** 2014

 **Diagnosis:** Bipolar disorder, ext. Intermittent Explosive Disorder

 **Ward nurse:** Dopheld Mitaka

 **Case Worker:** Poe Dameron

 **Visitors:** Weekly, family. Mother - Leia Organa; Father - Han Solo; Uncle - Luke Skywalker.

 

* * *

 

Ben was exhausted by the time they arrived at the hospital, despite his having slept in the back seat for most of the journey and the fact that it was only early afternoon. He opened his bleary eyes when he felt Poe gently shake his shoulder as they passed through the gates - the guard needed to see his face properly. The man looked blessedly uninterested in Ben as he cursorily compared his features to the paperwork he had in his hands, its creases indicating that it had been folded in a pocket before being retrieved.

“Well, here we are,” Poe said, unnecessarily and in an obnoxiously bright voice. “Ashcliff. C’mon, buddy, we’ll get you sorted.”

Ben shrugged, staring at his feet. He struggled out of his seatbelt, and Poe here to open the door before unfolding himself out of the car.

Although the facade of the hospital was old—featuring a large archway with a clock set into it and a sign bearing the name and details of the ward—now that they’d passed through it, the courtyard Ben in which found himself  looked more like a school than anything else. There were even flowerbeds underneath the windows.

At the entrance, Poe pressed the bell, gave his name and Ben’s, and held the door when it buzzed open. The woman at the desk gave them a smile and handed over some paperwork for Poe to sign, while Ben slumped into one of the chairs that lined the wall, glaring at the posters on a noticeboard to his left side. It was just like school noticeboards, except that this one has leaflets for things like ‘Visiting Your Child - 5 Fun Things to Do’ and ‘What Can I Mail to my Loved One?’ and ‘Ashcliff Christmas Donations’ rather than sign-up sheets for after school clubs.

“Ben?”

It was Poe again, standing beside a new man with dark hair. He stepped forward and touched Ben on the shoulder.

“Ben, this is Dopheld Mitaka. He’s going to take you through and get you sorted out, but I’ll see you again before I leave, okay?”

“Whatever.”

Poe smiled his patient smile, the one Ben hated but saw far too much of regardless. Poe’s reaction to almost everything he said seemed to be to smile in one way or another.

Mitaka took Ben through to another room, where someone else took his fingerprints and his photo before he was given a new set of clothes to change into; the new officer made a list of Ben’s own things before putting them into a plastic tub with a label affixed to the front.

“You’ll get them back. We’ll keep them safe for you,” she told him as she handed him a slip of paper with a number on it. “Keep hold of this for now. If you can memorise it, that’s great; you’ll need it for most things.”

It was almost a relief to sit through a doctor’s appointment and then meet Ben’s therapist—the most familiar part of the afternoon—before Mitaka finally asked him if he wanted a shower, he didn’t, before he showed him to his room.

“It’ll just be you for now,” Mitaka explained, as Ben poked gingerly at the corner of the bedside table. “Maybe in the future we’ll see about getting you a roommate, but for now you’ve got some space. Your social worker is going to drop by before he leaves, all right? Okay, I’ll let you settle in until then—oh! Here he is now.”

Poe had stuck his head around the door to Ben’s room. “Hey! You all settled in?”

Ben shrugged, bringing his knees up to his chest on the bed and not looking at Poe, who took this as an invitation to sit down at the small desk.

“You want to give your folks a call?”

“No.”

“That’s fine; maybe tomorrow. You feeling okay?”

Ben didn’t reply, instead resting his forehead on his knees.

“I know it’s rough to start, but it’ll be all right.”

“Whatever.”

“Want me to stay a bit?”

“No.”

“Okay, buddy. I’ll head off, but I’ll see you soon?”

When Ben said nothing, Poe let himself out and, after one last question from Mitaka, Ben was finally left alone. Sitting at the head of his bed he could rest his forehead against the window, glumly staring down over the walls out to the hills.

This was it, now, this was going to be his life: chirpy nurses and social workers, metal bars painted white to make them seem less intrusive, blue streetlights in the courtyards to lessen aggressive behaviour (at least in theory). He had no idea how long they actually kept you in a mental hospital after doing what he had, although he had been told so by various people over the course of the shitshow which had landed him here; but he knew  that his stay wasn’t going to be a short one.

It was going to be like school, only worse, with permanently locked doors and nowhere to go to be by himself. He was going to be surrounded by other kids. Couldn’t anyone see how bad of an idea that was?

*

Waking up was disorienting, and Ben's first reaction to the hand gently touching his shoulder was to mumble, “Dad, no, I'll skip breakfast…” before his sleep-addled thoughts were pierced by the still-unfamiliar voice of Nurse Mitaka, who’d come to get him out of bed.

When Ben had  brushed his teeth and used the bathroom, Mitaka led him down another hallway, to a cafeteria with round tables and kids chattering everywhere.  Names were being ticked off a clipboard by another nurse before they went to collect their breakfast; sometimes a kid would hand over a slip of paper to the person behind the counter and there would be a pause while a particular tray was fetched for them.

“Do you have your paper from yesterday?” asked Mitaka. “With your number?”

Ben fished the crumpled item in question from his pocket and held it up.

“Good! You’ll need to give the number along with your name so that the staff can tick you off, then show it again at the counter. You’ll get a proper ID card later.”

Ben wanted to ignore the toast, scrambled egg, and pieces of fruit upon the tray with which he was presented when he gave his number, but not only was he hungry, he had a suspicion that it wouldn't be met with favour from the nurses. Some of them were sitting interspersed with the kids, eating their own food or else apparently just supervising, so Ben gave up on his passing thought of protest and was finished in less than ten minutes. It was typical school food, slightly soggy on all fronts and with the distinct blandness that only came with foods bought in catering bulk.

“Are you finished?” Mitaka asked, appearing again at Ben's elbow after a few minutes.

Ben looked at his empty plate, then back at the nurse.

“If you're done, there's someone I'd like to introduce you to. He'll show you around until you find your feet, okay?”

He always phrased things as questions, Ben realised as they made their way across the room to a table near the door. Mitaka waved a hand at one of the boys sitting there, one arm curled around his still-nearly-full bowl of oatmeal.

“Armitage, could you do me a favour, please?”

The other boy looked up, his eyes going to Ben and then immediately back to Mitaka.

“This is Ben; he arrived yesterday. Could you show him around for me?”

Ben tried not to scowl; it didn't entirely work, so he directed it at the floor. Even here, he was getting paired off with one of _those_ kids. They were usually nerdy kids who were too afraid of his size to get a word out straight, or else preppy kids who gave him the most cursory school tour possible before running off back to their pack of friends. They never invited him to sit with them or hang out past the initial day they’d been obligated to show him around, instead leaving him to navigate the numerous pitfalls of adolescent society alone.

“Hello.”

Mitaka had bustled away, and the new boy was looking at him. His clothing hung off him like a wire hanger and there was a galaxy of freckles on his face, vanishing under the collar of his sweater. He wasn’t smiling, which was a pleasant surprise after Poe and Mitaka.

“Please sit.” Armitage pointed to an empty chair beside him. “I'm not finished yet.”

Ben sat down, picking at a fingernail. When Armitage asked him, “What did they show you already?”, he struggled to remember a single thing.

“Bathrooms,” Ben mumbled. He presented his strip of numbered paper. “This.”

“Okay. We’ll start over.” Armitage ate a spoonful of oatmeal and then stood up. “Come on.”

Once they had left the cafeteria, Armitage stopped. He led Ben towards the reception area through which Ben had come through yesterday; it was quieter in the hall than in the cafeteria. They stopped outside the locked door which led to the main reception. It was almost as if someone had cut the room in half; there was also a desk and worn looking chairs on their side of it as well, as well as the various notices and leaflets.

“Do you want to call your parents?” asked Armitage.  

Ben gave it a few more seconds of thought than he had yesterday before answering, “No.”

“All right, but I'll show you how to do it anyway. You can request visits, too.”

“We can request visits?”

“Of course.” Armitage gave him a look that suggested this was the most obvious thing in the world. It made Ben bristle slightly. “We're always being encouraged to ‘reach out’; parents are usually the first point of contact for that.”

“Do you do that?” Ben asked, nastily.

Armitage ignored him in favour of taking a soft plastic binder from a holder on the wall next to a mounted telephone, and flipping it open to show him a bulleted list of instructions.

“Instructions are here. Do they make sense?”

“Yeah.”

“Is anything unclear?”

“The stupid cartoons.”

Armitage’s mouth twitched minutely as he put the folder back on the wall.

“The nurse who put this one together was rather fond of clip art.”

Next they moved on to what Armitage called the ‘day room,’ although he explained that, despite the name, it wasn't the only room into which they were allowed during the day; in fact it was a common area. It was a large, light-filled space with furniture scattered around like a collection from a thrift store , which, when Ben thought about it, it probably was. There were board games piled on a shelf at one wall, and even a television, although like everything else, it looked decades old.

After the day room, the tour continued. Ben cringed when Armitage described having to ask one of the staff to unlock the toilet for you if you needed it, desperately hoping he was joking when he said they waited outside for you to be done. Armitage’s expression said he wasn't, and Ben suddenly missed hall passes. Next they moved onto the library, which was exactly like Ben's previous school libraries, just with less edges; there was even a nurse on duty as librarian. Armitage said good morning to her and she acknowledged him by name.

“Shall we go outside?”

“Whatever.”

‘Outside’ was a courtyard garden with a few picnic tables here and there, and a games field farther down, ringed by a wall topped with wire. There were a few attempts at window boxes around the courtyard, containing sad little pansies that had obviously been planted with good intent but then left wholly unattended.

“If you want to go out, there has to be–” Armitage began as they moved back into the hallway from where they'd been looking out the garden door into the courtyard.

“A staff member. I get it,” Ben finished for him.

Again, Armitage ignored him, and began to lead them back to the day room.

Either breakfast was finally over or something else was going on, because when they arrived there were other kids everywhere, as if moving between classes. Here and there a nurse emerged above the smaller ones, of whom Ben got his first proper glimpse as they scurried past the two older boys.

“How old are the youngest kids here?” he asked. “That one looked, what, six?”

“Seven,” Armitage corrected him. “They have a separate ward, but they use our rooms occasionally.”

“Fuck.”

“I doubt they'll bother you.”

“No, I mean–” Ben groped for words. “Seven?”

Armitage grinned suddenly; it wasn’t nice.

“Don't not watch out for them just because they’re little,” he said. “The nurses say you haven’t really worked here until you've been bitten.”

*

Over the course of that afternoon, Ben quickly learned that boredom was the real punishment at Ashcliff.

Armitage had led him back to the dayroom, announcing that he was going to read, before folding himself into one of the battered chairs dotted around the room. For lack of a better option, Ben had sat down in a neighbouring chair to look out the window, which became boring approximately three minutes later.

The only thing to look forward to, if you could call it that, all afternoon was another therapy session, before dinner and being locked up for the night. But that was still hours from now. Ben’s eyes strayed to the pile of board games at the edge of the room, but he waved the idea away; it was asking for trouble. After a cursory rummage through the bookshelves, he made his way back to Armitage.

“Do they bring in new books?” he asked.

Armitage looked up from his page.

“Of course,” he said. “Every few weeks there’s usually something different, or your parents can bring you things.”

Ben thought longingly of the collection of fantasy paperbacks in his room at home. “That’s allowed?”

“Yes. Although they’ll check everything first, so don’t ask for porn.”

It was all Ben could do not to choke on his own spit. “I wasn’t going to!” he hissed, feeling an automatic flush creep up to his ears at the suggestion.

Armitage just blinked at him. “I didn’t say you were.”

Ben hesitated before slumping back into his chair, shoulders slightly hunched, with a muttered ‘whatever then.’ He had expected Armitage to poke fun at him, but the other boy just continued to look at him for a moment longer before turning his gaze back to his book.

In the end, Ben gave in and copied him, pretending to read  a book that claimed to be something you’d ‘never want to put down,’ for the rest of the afternoon until dinner.

(It wasn’t.)

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: I have done my research for this fic, but am aware that not everything will be 100% accurate. If you have input on the accuracy of the setting, please let me know.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at: [maplelantern](http://maplelantern.tumblr.com/)


End file.
